


Lines

by Phoebe (Emeraldwoman)



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:06:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Phoebe





	Lines

Falling in love with Ron Weasley was so obvious a cliche that Hermione refused to believe she'd done it.

It was like the stories her mother read when her father wasn't around, guilty-warm with a glass of red wine and dark chocolates, pages curling gently in the steam of lavender-scented bubble-baths. Hermione had read some of them, for research. The stories of damsels-in-distress and sneering, commanding heroes had been awful, but amusing. The stories she really hated had brightly coloured covers with handbags and shoes and embossed titles and they were all about modern women falling for the wrong man, and then the right man. The right man was usually someone the modern woman had hated at first sight. Or her best male friend who had pined for her until she'd realised her mistake.

When her father was home, Hermione's mother read the classics and anything that had won a major literary prize. She read them voraciously, and because she enjoyed them, and because a woman who had named her daughter Hermione should read those kinds of books and a woman who read those kinds of books had named her daughter Hermione. But she kept the other books in the bottom shelf and pulled them out when her husband was away.

Hermione didn't have any use for stories in general, not when she could read about things that had really happened and were actually important. But she especially hated the handbag-and-pink-cover books. She didn't know much about love, but she was certain it couldn't be wrapped up neatly in 300 pages. They were pretty lies that purported to be the magical truth.

And besides, she knew she wasn't the hero of her own story. That place had been already claimed.

Harry was the centre of everything. He shone, somehow, eclipsed them all easily, without intent or malice. Whenever anyone pointed this out to him he was either embarrassed or annoyed. Sometimes, Hermione pointed it out to him to make him embarrassed or annoyed on purpose. Sometimes, she suspected he knew she was doing it on purpose, and was grateful. Embarrassed and annoyed were better than maudlin and depressed.

Really, she and Ron had nothing but Harry in common, but he was so central to them, to everything, that apparently this was enough.

Thinking about Harry, Hermione had discovered, was usually a wonderful way to stop thinking about Ron. Except that Harry wasn't here right now, and Ron was. He sprawled at her feet as she sat on the armchair, lying on his side with her wool wound about his hands. The firelight made his hair copper, not orange, and the long shadow of his nose seemed dramatic, not silly.

"Sometimes, Hermione," he said reflectively. "You're such a girl." He wasn't looking at her, exactly, but at the scarf in her hands.

Hermione pulled the next stitch a little too tight. "What do you mean?"

"You knit," Ron said. "That's a girl thing."

"I wash my socks, too," Hermione said caustically. "Which is something boys apparently don't do."

"Professor Lupin washes his socks," Ron pointed out. "He wears a new pair every day." There was a faint awe in his tone, and also a very slight contempt. Such cleanliness was apparently excessive and not quite proper.

"You don't wash your socks," Hermione said. "Is the point I was making. Harry doesn't wash his either," she added.

"We were talking about you. Not Harry."

"I thought we were talking about socks." She held up the scarf. "I think I'll knit Dobby another pair after this is finished."

Ron sat up, the line of wool going slack between them. "You. Not socks."

Hermione's traitorous stomach jumped again. Ron was very tall. His eyes were now level with her breasts, eyes shadowed under his hair. He tilted his head back slowly.

"I wanted to talk about you," he said simply.

Hermione stood up, the scarf in her hands. They were still linked by that line of red wool. If she went she'd have to leave her scarf behind. It was almost finished, and she'd spent so much time on it.

She put it down, carefully. It was too hard to look at Ron's eyes. She looked at his hands, instead, wound tight in red wool.

"I better see if your Mum wants help with dinner," she said.

"Hermione-"

"We can talk about it later," she said, knowing that later she would find another excuse, and another, until Ron gave up on trying to take their story in another direction. It was tempting. In that story, she could have been the central character.

But she hated the handbag-and-pink-cover books, and Harry was the centre of everything, and she loved her new scarf, but not enough to wear it every day.

"Sure," Ron said. "Later."

Hermione nodded and left him by the fire, trying to untangle the wool from his hands.


End file.
